What it means to live in a country with history dating back to the dawn of man:
"Holland wasn't always known for its flowers. That only began in the 16th Century."
For those of us who always mix up the numbers, that's the 1500's.
The New World was still new to most Europeans. (The Norse had been there, done that, got the t-shirt.) In 1500 Columbus was arrested by the Spanish government. In 1503 DaVinci painted the Mona Lisa. In 1517 Martin Luther pinned his note to the church door. (The note said, "Now hang on a minute!" only in German.) You know, the 16th Century, that stuff that so did not happen yesterday by any stretch of the imagination.
Except in Holland. The oldest Dutch city (Voorburg) was 12 years past its 1500th birthday in 1500AD. The second-oldest city, Nijmegen, didn't get around to turning 1500 years old until 1505. Those are cities that are still around. Tools discovered in Holland date back some 370,000 years; human remains as old as 40,000 years (that's pre-homo sapiens sapiens, homo sapiens neanderthalis) have been discovered.
So to the Dutch, it's perfectly reasonable to say, "That only began in the 16th Century."
Kinda blows your mind if you didn't grow up with that span of history acknowledged in your society.
